Part 15

They found themselves suddenly among long ranks of resting infantry squatting and lying in close proximity to their piled arms. The feld-grau uniforms merged, were lost in the fog, but there was an indefinable suggestion of the presence of many thousands. The Oberst and his guest might walk where they would, the shadowy grey forms still loomed up out of the mist. All were cheerful and confident. The officers in little groups smiling as they conversed, bent over a map. The men grinning. They were waiting for the guns to level the path for their "promenade."

At last the ranks of infantry ceased. They came upon a field battery that was firing furiously. The guns were in the open, their upturned caissons--lid upright to form a shield, exposing the pigeon-holed bases of the cartridges--close against the left wheel. Grouped behind each were the busy gunners, in rapid movement of arms and torso, crouching, labouring with swift concentrated intensity as they passed the long, gleaming projectile from hand to hand, thrust it into the breech, closed and fired. Behind them was a heap of brass cartridge-cases, the flat compartmented baskets that had held three rounds. The watching officers, helmeted, in long closely-buttoned coats, stood behind their sections. The battery hurled out its stream of death in absolute immunity. No enemy shell came to seek it. The fog veiled its target.

Beyond that battery was another, in the open like the first, almost wheel to wheel with it. And beyond that, another and yet others, an endless chain of them, all scorning concealment, all firing as fast as sweating, straining men could load and pull the lever. From behind came the prolonged, heavy, linked detonations of yet other batteries of more weighty metal. Overhead the rumble and rush of hurrying shells was as the sound of heavy traffic.

The neutral and his guide turned eastwards towards the zone of the great howitzers. Once more they were entangled in waiting masses of grey-clad infantry. The mist had thinned, permitted quite long vistas. Everywhere there was infantry, battalion upon battalion, regiment on regiment, brigade after brigade. The time had passed--by the neutral, at least, almost unnoticed, so much was there for his brain to register--it was now almost noon. The infantry was standing to its ranks, forming into column of route, marching forward with songs and shouts, their spiked helmets decorated with sprigs of fir. "_Vorwärts!_" came the sharp, barking commands of the officers. "_Nach Verdun!_" shouted the excited men, drunk with the prospect of superbly easy victory.

And ever the indefatigable batteries hammered and crashed, spewing forth death in volumes that the men they served might live. From behind every hedge, every hillock; in long lines across the open--so many that they could afford to neglect the enemy's reply; their tongues of flame shot out, flickered indefinitely repeated into the distance. Their infinitely reiterated detonations smote splittingly upon the ear, were gathered into one overpowering roar.

The dark mass of the Forêt de Spincourt was riven by red flame that lit and was gone momentarily in every part of its recesses. As the two officers approached it, they saw a faint film of smoke hanging over the tree-tops, saw the quick flashes gleaming through the undergrowth of the verge. They entered its obscurity. The air choked one with the fumes of burnt explosive, beat against the face in gusts with the disturbance of the multiplied discharges. The wood was a nest of howitzer batteries. On platforms of concrete and timber the monsters squatted, bowed their head to receive yet another shell, raised it again with slow, determined movement, the great round jaws gaping upward to the sky, belched with a sudden eructation of vivid flame, a tremendous shock of which the stunning noise was only part. The spectator behind the gun, looking upward, saw a black object speeding high into the air, rapidly diminishing, the while a rain of twigs pattered down upon his face. As the barrel was lowered again, the breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle. Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar.

Further within the wood were still greater monsters, so huge that their aliment was trundled to them on light rails, swung into their maw by overhanging cranes. The earth shook, the trees rocked, with the vehemence of their discharge.

"Frau Bertha has a most persuasive voice, _nicht wahr_?" said the Oberst to his guest. The neutral agreed as courteously as was possible in this chaos of bludgeoning noise. His dark eyes rested a little contemptuously on the dapper, somewhat podgy colonel whose soul, even in this crisis of nations, was still essentially the soul of a commercial traveller. The order to Krupp's was not yet given.

It was one o'clock--noon to the anxious French general far over there in the terrible distance. As suddenly as it had commenced, the vast bombardment ceased. There was an uncanny silence. All knew its significance. The German infantry was advancing to the assault. With what resistance would it be met? Every ear was at strain--machine-guns? There was no sound. Suddenly the bombardment opened again, as violent as before. The German guns were putting a screen of death behind the doomed positions, barring off all help. Far away huge shells were crashing down from a curve that was four miles high at its zenith, making an inferno of a once quiet cathedral town, wrecking the bridges across a flooded river, blocking every avenue of supply to the defenders agonising on the plateau.

That night in the Army Headquarters was a night of jubilation. Courtier soldiers--who none the less laboured into the small hours at the intricate calculations and orders that would improve the victory on the morrow--glanced at a youngish, very exalted personage and murmured platitudes about the pardonable intoxication of success. An even more exalted personage strode from general to general in the great tapestried, map-hung apartment and gave instructions that were received as the inspiration of genius and then merged, lost sight of, nullified in the mass of orders that emanated from those fiercely toiling brains.

The distinguished guest sat at the table with the keen-eyed, white-browed general, had everything patiently explained to him.

"All has gone exactly according to schedule," said the German. "The first line positions are ours. There has been a counter-attack in the Bois de Caures, but we have stemmed it. Elsewhere there has been no serious opposition. The first day has been a brilliant success. We have pierced the line where we intended to pierce it. If the French maintain their flank positions their disaster is certain. The battle will be developed to-morrow. We shall drive right through to the Ornes-Louvemont road. The French defence is dead, was annihilated by our bombardment. To-morrow disintegration will set in and our progress will be rapid. On the third day we shall take Fort Douaumont--the key to Verdun."

"And on the fourth day?" queried the neutral, his dark eyes gazing at the map in front of him.

"We shall be in Verdun!" said the German.

"_Verdun! Verdun! Nach Verdun--Paris!_" chanted an unsteady voice across the room, finished in a suspicious resemblance to a hiccup. There was a moment of tense, awkward silence in the great apartment, and then a buzz of low voices earnestly discussing technicalities.

* * * * *

Day followed day, surcharged with fateful issues. Men who flung themselves down, utterly wearied, to snatch a brief sleep, woke from it with an oppression of the breast, a tremor of the nerves. Their fiercely excited brains begrudged an instant's unconsciousness where every minute was a vehicle of destiny, once ahead never to be overtaken. Strenuously, night and day, laboured the Staffs in the Army Headquarters, in the Corps, Divisions, Artillery Groups--desperately, for after the second day they were behind their time-table. On that second day the French defence they had fondly thought annihilated woke to sternly resisting life. There had been terrific fighting on the whole front from Brabant to Ornes. Once more a frightful bombardment had opened with the dawn. Once more the German infantry had advanced in masses. They found the trenches in front of them weakly held, had occupied them. But _en route_ a storm of shells had rained down on the swarming columns, had strewn the ground with dead and dying. Further advance was barred by sheets of rifle-fire, torrents of machine-gun bullets. There were ugly rumours as to losses. The day's objective had not been reached. Counter-attacks had flung the grey infantry out of positions already conquered.

During the black night of the 22nd-23rd, while the gun-teams of the German batteries strained and stumbled forward over a shell-torn ground to new positions, the French left flank had fallen back from Brabant. The German guns hurled an avalanche of projectiles blindly upon the new lines of defence, more or less at hazard since no longer did they have them accurately marked upon the map. Once more the grey masses swept forward, once more the hail of shells beat them down. The end of that day saw the centre pushed in with wild confusion, but the French resistance still alive, determined to perish rather than break. Once more the objective had not been attained. Douaumont was not even menaced. The time-table was hopelessly out. That night the French fell back on both flanks, withdrew from Ornes.

The fourth day dawned--the appointed day for final victory--and still the struggle continued, fiercer than ever. Slowly, slowly, the German infantry pressed forward, leaving behind them a sea of helpless bodies--a grey carpet as perceived from a distance. The artillery fire swelled and mounted in paroxysms of incredible violence, the German guns hammering in savage persistence, the French batteries lurking for their target, overwhelming it in a deluge. On and on pressed the grey infantry, thrust dangerously as night fell straight at the heart, towards Fort Douaumont. A fierce conflict--body to body, rifles that flashed in the face of the victim, bayonets perforce shortened for the thrust, griping fingers clutching at the throat as men wrestled and swayed--raved and roared in an indescribable tumult upon the Ornes-Louvemont road. The defenders had made a supreme rally. The Germans fought like men who grasp at victory, maddened that it is withheld. The French fought like heroes, desperately outnumbered, who know their duty is to die. When night fell the defence was still intact, but the French had withdrawn to their last line, covering Douaumont.

"We have still one more day," said the German general to the distinguished neutral that night in the great map-hung apartment. "We allowed that margin of time. To-morrow will see our greatest effort, Douaumont in our hands, Verdun untenable." The dark eyes of the neutral read a certain nervousness in the German's face, despite the confident tone.

"It has proved rather more difficult than you expected?"

"The French field-guns have been terrible--terrible," replied the German. "Without them----" He waved an expressive hand. "But to-morrow we shall deliver the _coup de grâce_. We have not boasted idly, Excellenz." His eyes looked searchingly through their pince-nez on the calmly interested face of the neutral. "When Germany threatens she performs."

On the morning of the 25th the German guns roared over white fields of snow, through veils of the softly falling flakes that fluttered inexhaustibly from the leaden sky. Their thunder swelled louder and ever louder as the batteries which had changed position, consequently upon the French withdrawal during the night, got to work, searching for their target, more or less accurately finding it despite the difficulty of observation. Not a minute was to be lost. The anxious German staff knew that the reinforcements of their foes must be hurrying--hurrying. Some perhaps had already arrived. If night fell without definite victory, the morrow would surely see fresh masses against them, reinvigorating the defence. Victory to-day--complete victory--Douaumont captured, the pursuit pressed into the streets of Verdun--meant victory indeed. Mighty therefore was the effort. By noon every German battery was firing at its maximum. Under the leaden sky, over the white ground, in the still cold of a bitter frost, their thunder swelled and crashed, roaring in a never-ending frenzy. Eighteen German divisions were massed to break down all opposition. Already they had attacked--again and again. Again and again, the rapid detonations of the French guns had leaped into the din, smiting desperately, frantically, to stay them. Over there, in the mist-hung gullies of the plateau, on its bare open spaces between the woods, the snow had ceased to be white--save where it fell freshly upon the huddled bodies of the fallen.

In the afternoon the weather cleared somewhat. More distant views were possible. On the higher of the Twins of Ornes, the knolls just south-west of the Forêt de Spincourt, stood the figure who more than any other individual would have to dare the answer for all the agony rolled out there before him, for all the agony that no eye could measure, spread over continents, crying to strange stars. Spiked helmet on his head, long grey cavalry-cloak wrapped about him, his field-glasses held to his eyes by the right hand only, he gazed upon the now distant conflict. At his side stood a younger figure, his face masked also by binoculars. Behind them was a group of dignitaries, generals of high position, the distinguished neutral and the Oberst who never quitted him. All gazed to the wooded scarp of the Heights of the Meuse, their glasses pointing south-south-west.

The great masses of woodland rose dark from the snow of the plain a long stretch of undulating, climbing tree-tops. Beyond them the bare bulk of the plateau humped itself yet higher, dirty grey against the sky. It rose to a culminating knoll--Douaumont! All that bare plateau was whelmed in a drifting reek, but the highest point was like a volcano in eruption. Great founts of smoke shot up from it incessantly, spread in the air in heavy plumes that overhung. It was the objective of the 3rd Corps (Brandenburgers), attacking under the eye of the Kaiser so particularly their chief. Their orders were that Douaumont was to be taken at all costs. On the Twin of Ornes operators from Army Headquarters had taken over the telephone dug-out. Behind them the line was clear to Berlin--waiting--waiting for the triumphant announcement that should thrill the world.

Somewhat impatiently the neutral scanned the lofty distances where the great drama was being enacted. Innumerable puffs of bursting shells indicated the conflict but gave no hint of its varying fortunes. The professional instinct was strong within him, the report to his Government an ideal to which it strove. To perfect that report he must see the fight at closer quarters, must describe the effects of the French fire as a complement to the already written minute on the German batteries. His keen eye picked out a position of vantage on the Heights. Then he waited for an opportunity, alert for the moment when the eye of majesty should rest itself from the distant view, should fall upon him. The opportunity occurred. The glance of the All-Highest swept over him, preoccupied. The neutral stepped forward, saluted, indicated the far-off point.

"_Ich bitte um Erlaubnis, Majestät_,"[15] he said.

A frowning glance rested upon him for an instant, intolerant of aught save the mighty contest whose issue was the fate of nations.

"_Gestattet_,"[16] was the curt, indifferent reply.

The German Oberst, standing behind the neutral, changed colour. He had no option but to accompany this damnable foreigner in his mad adventure into unnecessary danger. He, too, saluted "Majestät," followed the neutral to the spot where a number of orderlies stood at the heads of saddled horses. They had been sent forward in case the dignitaries should require them.

In a few moments the two officers, followed by mounted attendants, were slithering down the snowy side of the knoll, were cantering across the valley towards Ornes.

High above them towered the dark Bois de la Chaume as they threaded the débris-covered street of the wrecked village. It was packed with Brandenburger infantry waiting to advance. They followed the road southward, at the foot of the hills, towards Bezonvaux. Everywhere the infantry stood thick, waiting. The cannonade mounted to a frightful intensity, appalling even the ears now habituated to it, bewildering the senses, troubling the sight. French shells came whining, screaming, rushing, to burst with loud crashes in the woodland rising on their right hand, on the road and the fields through which it passed. Domes of dark smoke leaped upward from the earth, preceding the stunning, metallic detonation. White shrapnel puffs clustered thickly above the trees. Bezonvaux was a ruin. They turned off from it to the right, up a rough track that climbed into the woods. The snow on the track had been trampled into a dirty slush. All about them lay bodies, grey and blue; weapons pell-mell as they had fallen from a suddenly opened grasp. Their horses shuddered, whinnied, jerked nervous ears, moved disconcertingly sideways from red stains soaking deep into the snow.

Just under the edge of the plateau the neutral stopped, dismounted, threw his reins to an orderly. The Oberst followed his example. His face was blotchy white, he trembled in every limb.

"We shall see nothing, Excellenz--absolutely nothing," he asseverated appealingly.

"We can at least try," replied his guest. "Something is happening over there."

Above them, some distance ahead, was a tremendous uproar, a chaos of violent thudding slams, splitting crashes, a faint troublous murmur of human voices. Behind them, up the rough track, a column of infantry was advancing, overtaking them. They ascended with a steady progress, splashing through the slush; officers waving swords, shouting; rank upon rank of tense faces that had lost their humanity in the tremulous brute; glazed staring eyes under the spiked helmets; singing, singing like drugged, doomed gladiators marching to the arena. They passed upward.

The neutral, to whom his conductor had nervelessly surrendered the initiative, led the way. They left their horses behind them, struck off at a tangent to the right, through the woods, climbing always. They emerged upon the plateau, in a clearing. Across the open space, from a whelm of smoke and noise in the distance, groups of grey men were running swiftly towards them, shouting inarticulately. Along the edge of the woods was a line of pickets. Their weapons rose to the shoulder. Sternly, every fugitive but those wounded was driven again into the fight. Those who hesitated, screaming under the menace of the rifle, dropped shot.

The neutral hurried along the verge of the wood, scanning every tall tree carefully, expectantly. "Ah!" He had found what he sought. Against the green bark of a lofty beech dangled a rope ladder. It was an abandoned French artillery observation post. He scrambled up the ladder, followed by the trembling, shivering Oberst. High up among the topmost branches was a little platform.

The neutral settled himself, adjusted his binoculars, pushed aside the twigs. He looked out over an undulating terrain, dark with woods that ceased raggedly in deep indentations short of a bare hog's back that gathered itself into a hump. That bare ground was smothered in a turmoil of smoke that fumed to the grey sky, far to right and left. But through it, in chance rifts, his glasses revealed a dark mass upon the highest point. A reek of white smoke drifted away from it as from burning buildings, mingling with the darker clouds of incessant explosions. He had a glimpse of a rounded cupola. It was Douaumont!

The snow on the open space between the fort and the woods was grey. It was moving with crawling life like the festering of a stagnant pool. Over it burst occasional puffs of shrapnel.

"Ah!" The cry was involuntary from both the watching men. From the woods emerged masses of running tiny grey figures, running, running towards the fort. The open space was covered with them. A moment of tense expectation when the heart seemed to stop--and then, as by a terrible magic, great fountains of dark smoke and darker objects leaped up among those running figures, countless explosions. A canopy of vicious little shrapnel bursts in thousands spread itself over them. Under it men sprawled in great patches, seemed to be fighting the air ere they tumbled and fell. A horrid screaming came faint through the uproar. More masses rushed out, were beaten down. There was a running to and fro of men bewildered--a headlong flight.

The storm of fire did not cease. It rolled over the plateau towards the woods, remorselessly following the fugitives. Louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the crashes, the fountains, the puffs--the great mingled reek of the inferno--rolled towards the two men in the observation post.

The Oberst clutched the neutral's arm.

"Excellenz!" he shouted stammeringly. "We must go. I insist. I have superior authority--written authority--my discretion--I insist!" he almost screamed. His hand groped for a scrap of paper which he waved. "Arrest!" he cried like a maniac. "Arrest if you do not come!"

The storm of French shells was a very near menace. The neutral acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders. Nimbly they descended the ladder.

On the ground they found themselves among a swarm of slightly wounded, terror-stricken men. One of them, a tall, bearded Brandenburger, his clothes torn to rags, was shrieking and laughing in a manner horrible to hear. His comrades drew away from him as he clutched at them. He was insane.

"Only I am left!" he cried. "Only I! They are all dead--dead--out there. They were meant to be dead. They were dead men before we attacked--all dead men running on--I could see it in their faces--only I was alive! And now they are still crawling--crawling--dead men!" His tone emphasised the horror of his words, struck a chill. A sentry lowered his rifle, irresolutely.

The maniac turned, waved a hand to the westward. The sun, on the point of setting, showed itself in a rift of the threatening snow clouds, sank, a great ball of glowing fire, over the rim of the plateau. Its last rays were lurid on the face of the madman, as he stood, arm outstretched, his eyes flaming, his tangled beard falling upon his rags, like some antique prophet of the wilderness.

"Woe! woe!" he shrieked. "_Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun--Verdunkelung!_"[17] He finished in a scream of maniac laughter, glorying in the crazy assonance of the words. "_Nach Verdun--Verdunkelung!_"

The neutral and the Oberst hurried through the woods to their horses.

A rapid ride with the German always in front, and once more they ascended the Twin of Ornes. As they arrived at the summit they found themselves among wildly cheering men. "_Douaumont! Douaumont is taken!_" Far away to the south-south-west, rocket after rocket shot up into the darkening sky. Already the great news had gone--electrical--to Berlin.

The crowd of dignitaries descended the steep path in the gloom to where the motor-cars were ranked in waiting. Along the road passed streams of wounded who could walk, phantoms half-distinguished in the dim light. Joyous were the voices of the War-Lords. One, a familiar tone, chanted: "_Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun--Paris!_"[18]

Out of the darkness came a screamed reply, a burst of insane laughter.